This project, which is the continuation of a first phase lasted three years, aims at developing and implementing a sustainable robust system for monitoring parameters of the seasonal snow from Earth Observation data acquired by European Space Agency (ESA) and third party missions in order to generate fully validated long term consistent multi-sensor time series of daily snow extent (SE), derived from medium resolution optical data and snow water equivalent (SWE) products from passive microwave data. The products will fulfil the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) requirements and provide global coverage of snow areas starting in the 1980s up to present day. Snow extent products will be generated for snow on the surface (viewable snow) and snow on the surface corrected for forest cover. The products will be delivered with detailed pixel-wise uncertainty maps. The impact of the generated snow products on the assessment of climate change will be studied by performing Earth System Model simulations, simulations of long term changes of hydrological regimes, and by analysing the snow component of ERA-5 reanalysis data. This project, founded by the European Space Agency (ESA), is developed in cooperation with a team made up by a mix of companies, research institutions and universities in Europe and Canada, working since many years in monitoring seasonal snow using satellite data, snow and climate research, as well as Earth system modelling. The role of the Institute for Earth Observation of Eurac Research is to lead the validation team, which aims at setting up the validation protocols, the reference data sets, and finally performing and analysing the validation and intercomparison of the generated products.

Contact Persons: Carlo Marin, Claudia Notarnicola

carlo.marin@eurac.edu; claudia.notarnicola@eurac.edu